The SCERA Shell Outdoor Theatre’s production of “Man of La Mancha” is thought-provoking and non-traditional, a classic musical with a decidedly unusual story-telling format, full of rich characters, intelligent themes and some experimental (i.e., weird) theatrical devices.

Pretty heady stuff for a summertime show (especially, I say with no ill intent, for SCERA).

Based on the 17th-century Spanish novel by Miguel de Cervantes, the 1965 musical begins with the author himself (Art Allen) cast into prison, awaiting the Inquisition. Using his fellow inmates as actors, he tells the story of Alonso Quijana, an old man who escapes from the home and thinks he’s a knight named Don Quixote.

Quixote (still played by Allen) travels with the sensible and stooge-like Sancho Panza (Jaelan Petrie), in search of damsels in distress and other adventures. He’s an idealist — that is, he’s delusional, seeing things as he wants them to be, rather than as they are.

This particularly applies to a country-inn serving wench named Aldonza (Megan Christensen), a woman of ill repute and even iller temper whom Quixote insists on calling “Dulcinea,” treating her like a lady rather than like the stinky whore she is. It is for her that he does his deeds of chivalry, hoping to be dubbed a true knight by the “Lord of the Castle,” who’s really just the innkeeper (Erik Christensen the night of the review; now played by Michael Gray).

The story keeps coming back to the prison, where Cervantes sets up the next couple scenes and assigns actors to them. It’s an unusual play-within-a-play technique that develops resonance by the end, when we see how Don Quixote/Alonso Quijana’s adventures relate to those of every-day guy Cervantes and his fellow prisoners.

Objecting to Alonso’s doddering foolishness is his niece’s fiance, Carrasco (Matthew Herrick), who is embarrassed to be marrying into a family presided over by a man who thinks he’s a knight. His attempts to bring Alonso back to “reality” are poignant and even disturbing, for who among us ever wants to give up his dreams?

That, ultimately, is the point of the show: Never give up your dreams, no matter how unrealistic they are. (It is not for nothing that “The Impossible Dream” is one of the most stirring songs in musical theater.)

Art Allen plays Cervantes, Alonso and Don Quixote with great vigor and energy, fully committing himself to the emotions and passions of the three characters and earning every bit of praise the audience gives him. Jaelan Petrie is enjoyable as his dedicated sidekick, and Megan Christensen’s Aldonza/Dulcinea is sympathetic and real. All three — in fact, the entire cast — have fantastic singing voices, perfectly complementing the exciting Spanish-tinged musical score.

Despite its unusual format and deep messages, “Man of La Mancha” should still have mainstream appeal. If you normally prefer pure escapist entertainment, try this one and see if you don’t like it just as well.

The stage version of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast,” the touring company of which is in Salt Lake City through Aug. 20, has its flaws. But just like its central theme tells us, it’s what’s on the inside that counts.

Fans of the 1991 animated classic will be delighted that all of the film’s songs remain intact, with several new ones added (by the same composer, so they have the right “feel”). In addition, the film’s dialogue is preserved, except where it’s been replaced by songs that convey the same ideas, or expanded to fit the longer format.

The only significant tweaking is that instead of the Beast’s servants having been fully transformed into household objects, they have only been partially changed, and continue to become more and more like clocks, candlesticks and teapots as time goes on. (This is to accommodate the fact that human-size actors are playing the roles that, in the animated film, were diminutive, anthropomorphized objects.)

Susan Owen plays Belle, the headstrong provincial French gal, with sweetness and a strong singing voice. Grant Norman’s Beast, placed under a curse until he can love a woman and earn her love in return, is difficult to fathom at first because of all the fur and makeup, but one quickly comes to enjoy the character and feel his pain.

Chris Hoch is fantastic as the loutish Gaston. He’s determinedly two-dimensional, playing the role with such firm, dedicated self-importance, a preening, Elvis-coiffed Travolta-wannabe, that he’s the funniest thing in the show.

Some of the others don’t fare as well. Lumiere (Ron Wisniski) and Cogsworth (John Alban Coughlan), while crowd favorites, are overly buffoonish in their behavior. Not only is it more clowny than funny, but it makes it hard to sympathize when they fret about whether they’ll ever be human again, because they seem even more like cartoon characters than their animated counterparts were. Mrs. Potts (Janet MacEwen) and the dresser (Monica M. Wemitt) are much more realistic in their personalities, and the dresser, former opera star Madame de la Grande Bouche, is even a little poignant.

“Be Our Guest” stops the show, and that’s not a compliment. The cartoon version was fantastic, a fast-paced, electrifying display of clever lyrics and toe-tapping music. The stage version has been lengthened and keeps slowing down to allow for big dance numbers. The result is that it’s not nearly as satisfying as the original — a case where bigger is not better.

Belle and the Beast’s night of dinner and dancing, during which Mrs. Potts sings the title song, is much more restrained and therefore much more effective.

There are also some dazzling special effects, from the Beast’s final transformation to the “how do they DO that?” maneuver of having a disembodied boy’s head play the young teacup Chip (Jonathan Press), his body magically hidden through stage trickery.

And it’s hard to criticize a show that has so much humanity and emotion at its heart, often bringing an audience to tears. It clunks here and there, but the non-sappy, stirringly real happy ending covers any tracks it may have left behind.

It would be hard to beat the animated film, which truly is a masterpiece of storytelling, song and beautiful ideas. But the stage version very nearly fills those big shoes by utilizing the same dramatic pacing and earnest love of humanity.

“The Star-Spangled Girl” is such a slight, innocuous little comedy that I wouldn’t be surprised if Neil Simon has forgotten he wrote it.

(Actually, I know he remembers it, because he was quoted in 1977 as saying, “‘Star-Spangled Girl’ is clearly and simply a failure, as far as I’m concerned.”)

The 1967 play, now at the Little London Dinner Theater, is not without its charms, and in fact has quite a few funny moments. It tells the story of Andrew (Elijah Cardon) and Norman (Shayne Hudson), two “radicals” who publish their own liberal magazine in San Francisco.

They are radicals in the sense that the play tells us they’re radicals. They look and dress like BYU students, and their gripes with America are not particularly spelled out.

Anyway, they live and work in a dumpy apartment, where their new neighbor is a Southern girl named Sophie (Eliza Wren Payne), an all-American bubble-pot with whom Norman immediately becomes smitten. His smittenness soon takes on the form of sweet-natured stalking, as she has no interest in him — and in fact, she finds herself falling for Andrew instead, despite their idealogical differences.

Shayne Hudson is eminently enjoyable as Norman, a flamboyant, enunciative, highly physical character who, when asked where he’s been all day, answers, “In love.” (Later, when Sophie threatens to have him arrested for bothering her, he says, “I’ll have YOU arrested for having creamy, smooth skin.”) Hudson takes a character who could easily be a creepy stalker and makes him sweet and funny.

Eliza Wren Payne’s Sophie is also well-done, a commanding presence in any scene she’s in. Only Elijah Cardon is flat as Andrew, speaking his lines accurately, but without much sense of comedy or timing.

The show is worth seeing, a harmless little trifle with some good laughs sprinkled throughout it.

Hale Center Theater’s latest crowd-pleaser is a rootin’-tootin’ comedy that delivers on its promise to both root and toot as it tells the story of a dunder-headed cowboy who becomes rich and don’t know what to do with hisself.

Tom Coterel (Mitch Hall) won a ranch in a poker game, and subsequently struck oil on it. Now he’s a millionaire and is pursued by Pamela Wright (MinD Jensen), a golddigger who is coquettish to the point of trashiness. She’s transparently evil and only after Tom’s money; Tom, however, is stupid enough to fall in love with her.

She goes back to New York for the summer, leaving Tom a few months to improve himself enough to impress her. (“I sure am dumb,” Tom says, rightly.) So in the tradition of “My Fair Lady” (which the Hale Center is doing next month), Tom hires a librarianish tutor named Florence (Marydee Potter) to teach him to be more cultured, to say “get” instead of “git,” and to stop slurping his soup.

Florence, however, falls in love with Tom. Since we know Pamela is dishonest, and we soon see how much Tom respects Florence, we can guess what will happen, and we’ll pretty much be right.

Tom’s ranch hands, Hank (Dave Hanson) and Lem (Larson Holyoak) lend humor to the two-fisted drinking lifestyle Tom leads and is trying to clean up, and his foreman, Link (Jim Burch), is a key player in Tom’s plan. All of these roles are played with sincerity and humor.

Also earning quite a few laughs is Josey Suarez as Jose, the ranch’s Mexican cook. His rapid-fire Spanish is cute, but his matador-style setting of the table is hysterical. It’s an interlude that’s completely unnecessary (except that it allows the other actors to change costumes for the next scene), but it truly is an inspired bit of physical comedy.

Mitch Hall is likable as the bedimpled cowboy who one assumes is the title character (though the shape of his toes never really becomes an issue). Marydee Potter seems so intent on making Florence prim and proper that she comes across as a bit bland, until a third-act scene where she gets wasted with Link and finally cuts loose.

This is a sweet, appealing show with relatively short scenes that keep the action moving, and some genuinely funny bursts of comedy. It’s not liable to make you think very hard, but it can certainly amuse you for a couple hours.

Hale Centre Theatre’s “Prelude of Love” is an uncomfortable combination of two shows: a beautiful piano concert, and a fairly average romance.

Set in Wyoming in 1908, the heroine is headstrong young Lillian Clement (Melanie Richardson), a classically trained pianist who feels unappreciated in her hick hometown, where the folks prefer Stephen Foster to Chopin (though they still ask her to play, for free, almost every night).

Lillian is obsessed with the piano, to the exclusion of more traditional things like getting married, which by all accounts she should be doing with Roy Callen (Quinn A. Dietlein). When a bigshot named Paul Walkerman (Brandon S. Jones) comes along and gives her a chance to go to New York and play at Carnegie Hall, she takes it — even though it means leaving Roy behind.

Will he wait for her? Will she have to choose between her music and her love? Unlike most Ruth Hale-written plays, which are supposed to be funny but aren’t, this one isn’t even supposed to be — and it works pretty well, with richer characters and better dialogue than usual (though one character does quote a newspaper article as saying “the audience was surprisingly startled,” which I hope no real newspaper would ever say). The dilemmas Lillian faces are real, and there are no black-and-white answers to them. Her final decision will please some viewers and annoy others, but at least it provokes thought of some kind.

The problem is that this is really a 45-minute story — despite its mostly good dialogue, there’s nothing particularly compelling about it — stretched out to 2 hours with a lot of piano playing. The show seems to have been written mostly as an excuse for the lead character to tickle the ivories every chance she gets: she’s playing for Roy to sing, or re-creating her night at Carnegie Hall, or improvising on a four-note melody that Paul came up with. Either the piano-playing is getting in the way of the story, or the story is getting in the way of the piano-playing. Whatever the case, just as you’re starting to get interested in one, the other one interrupts.

As a play, it’s so-so. As a piano concert, it’s fantastic. As both, it’s frustrating.

Ruth Hale herself plays the grandma in the show, a tart-tongued old gal who pronounces “Bach” as “Batch” and who dispenses spicy grandmotherly advise at every turn. Audiences adore Ruth Hale, and there’s plenty of her in this show.

Provo Theatre Company’s “Hula Hoop Sha-Boop,” a salute to the fabulous ’50s, couldn’t possibly be any cheesier, starting with the name, which surely must have come as a result of a “Think of a Dumb Name for a Show” contest.

But “Hula Hoop” is the good kind of cheesy. The show is not ashamed of its cheesiness; indeed, it revels in it, forcing even cheese-haters to smile at the sheer monstrous magnitude of the gooiness that oozes from the stage.

Two married couples — Quin W. and Joy Gardner, and Neal and Korianne Johnson — make up the cast. There is no plot; instead, the four performers act out ’50s-nostalgia skits and sing a lot of ’50s popular songs.

The first act is more skit-heavy, with reminiscences of “Name That Tune” and other mid-century pop cultural folderol. Also included is a fond parody of the absurdity of the old “duck-and-cover” method of avoiding atomic bomb-related death. (Warning: If you go to the show, you will be asked to duck and cover.)

The second act is almost all singing, squeezing no fewer than 40 different songs into 40 minutes’ worth of performing. The energetic, deeply committed cast (which, by the way, is the saving grace of the show — without that enthusiasm, the show would die a painful death and take its audience with it) keeps a strong sense of humor throughout. Some of the medleys get cute: A guy worshipfully sings “Earth Angel” to a girl and is admonished by another guy to “Walk Like a Man.”

The show both honors and gently mocks the ’50s, catering to people who grew up in that era as well as those who have only heard of it (which includes the cast). It is the former group who will find the most appeal in the show, however. Younger audiences will appreciate the fine singing and upbeat pace, but probably won’t get much more than that out of it. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, will no doubt delight in the re-creations of drive-in movies, ’50s TV and poodle skirts. (What was the deal with those, anyway? You’ve got a poodle on your skirt? So what?)

The show has a few instances of sly comedy (one fellow admits to secretly wanting to “take a peek at Barbie”), preferring to keep things warm and gentle instead, much like the decade itself. It’s a giddily entertaining bit of cotton-candy theater: not something you’d want to make a major staple in your diet, but a fine way to spend one summer evening.

“Annie Get Your Gun” isn’t performed much in Utah — odd, considering it has the word “gun” right in the title — so audiences should take advantage of the SCERA Shell’s production of it while they can.

Based on the somewhat-true story of sharp-shooter Annie Oakley’s rivalry/romance with Frank Butler, the 1944 Irving Berlin musical had a flashy Broadway revival last year, but still transfers well to a smaller theater with smaller resources.

Two things carry it: Berlin’s fantastic songs (“There’s No Business Like Show Business,” “I Got the Sun in the Morning,” “Anything You Can Do”), which have ingeniously rhymed lyrics the likes of which no one writes anymore these days; and star Jayne Luke as the title character. Luke, a legendary performer in these parts, is a spunky little spitfire, playing a role she’s perfect for

The story has Buffalo Bill (Marc Haddock) taking his Wild West show around the country, with Edgar Allen Poe look-alike Frank Butler (Brad Graff) as the star attraction. In Cincinnati, they run into Annie Oakley (Luke), a local backwoods gal who turns out to be at least a good a shot as Frank is.

Annie is put into the show, and the novelty of a woman sharpshooter helps make the tour successful. Her romance with Frank begins to blossom, but their pride, stubbornness and jealousy of each other gets in the way.

For a show that’s at least partly about the excitement of show business, this production has a curiously slow pace. One is tempted to merely call it “gentle” or “unhurried,” except that there are many moments in which one distinctly gets the sense that the actors could all pick up the pace just a bit and keep things moving.

Aside from that, and some energetic-but-uninspired choreography (does EVERY song have to end with EVERY cast member’s hands up in the air?), the show is a treat to watch, even if you’ve seen it before. Brad Graff has a deep, full voice that gives Frank a soft demeanor, and he and Jayne Luke play well off each other. Daren Gates is also quite good in a non-flashy role, that of show manager Charlie Davenport. Scott Young earns laughs and audience affection as Annie’s illiterate little brother Jake, too. And Alberto Oquendo’s portrayal of Sioux (or “Souix,” as it’s spelled on a sign onstage) Chief Sitting Bill is far more dignified and non-caricatured than the role has often gotten in the past.

Great songs, funny dialogue and solid performances make “Annie Get Your Gun” an almost-perfect summertime event.

They do Shakespeare pretty well down at the Shakespearean Festival, but Anton Chekhov? “The Shakespeare of Russia,” as he is sometimes called, apparently has them stymied.

How else to explain the extraordinarily uneven and uncertain production of “The Cherry Orchard”? Some actors shine brilliantly, some moments are electric … and then other actors embarrass themselves and scenes drag on forever.

It’s not an easy play to pull off, granted. It’s about turn-of-the-century upper-class Russians who are too unambitious and apathetic to act for themselves, and, as is often the case in plays about inactive people, nothing really happens.

The trick, then, is to make these characters seem 1) real and 2) likable, to make their flaws endearing and relevant to the audience, rather than frustrating.

We see it in Lyuba Ranevskaya (Michele Farr), a formerly wealthy landowner whose beloved estate and cherry orchard are about to be auctioned off, due to her immature money-squandering. Her brother, Leonid Gaev (Dennis Robertson), is even more sympathetic, waxing poetic about hundred-year-old bookcases and also not wishing to see his childhood home sold.

Farr and Robertson earn respect and command the stage in their roles. Robertson, in particular, gives vigor and sad humor to his character — exactly what can make the play successful, if everyone evokes the same connection from the audience.

At the other end of the spectrum is Yermolai Lopakhin (Rick Hamilton), a family friend and peasant-turned-businessman who suggests cutting down the cherry trees and putting up summer cottages in their place. That way, Lyuba and Leonid could afford to retain their land. They’ll have none of that, though, even though it’s their only real option; instead, they do nothing, and lose everything.

Hamilton’s Lopakhin is flat and stiff — befitting a businessman, perhaps, until his triumphant moment in obtaining the cherry orchard, which he conveys by standing in one place and ranting about how excited he is. He hasn’t been acting staid to fit the character; he’s just been being flat.

The production is too dignified for its own good. It would seem that director Kathleen F. Conlin has her actors so terrified of defiling the profound and brilliant words of Mr. Chekhov that they’re afraid to do anything beneath themselves, like be funny. The result is that in the rare instances when something humorous does occur, it seems jarringly out of place in the otherwise overly dramatic production. (Kristin Bennett, as Lyuba’s daughter Varya, best represents the “overly dramatic” part, weeping and moaning every chance she gets.)

An abstract, skewed set (by George Maxwell) and a few nice moments help the show avoid disaster. Henson Keys as serving-man Firs, the Russians’ last link to the old life of serfs and masters, is both dignified AND funny, and has the play’s haunting final moments to himself. Would that the rest of the show were as adept as he.

The Merry Wives of Windsor” is a merry play indeed, a festively costumed jaunt whose theme can be summed up in a phrase: Don’t try to commit adultery. It’s that, or else there is no theme. Either way, the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s production of it is well-acted and light-hearted from beginning to end.

Dennis Robertson plays Sir John Falstaff, the debt-ridden fat knight who foolishly believes he is loved by two married women and so plans to woo them and get their husbands’ money. Robertson’s Falstaff is a man of low class, looking like a saggy-pantsed backwoodsman, the sort of guy you’d find making moonshine in the Ozarks. For as much as we like him, we like seeing him suffer from the pranks of the revenge-bent women even more.

The two women, Mistress Page (Corliss Preston) and Mistress Ford (Fredi Olster), are the commanding presence in this show. Preston and Olster exhibit great comic ability between them, mischievously plotting to embarrass the lustful Falstaff and making these women come across as two of Shakespeare’s best ladies.

Providing most of the rest of the laughs are Slender (David Ivers) and Doctor Caius (A. Bryan Humphrey), both in love with Page’s daughter Anne (Mary Dolson). Slender is a mis-named, malapropping Ed Grimley-type character, bumbling around foolishly but nonetheless gaining the favor of Anne’s father (Raymond L. Chapman). Caius is outrageously French, sounding (and even looking) a lot like John Cleese’s French taunter in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” He’s older, but he has money and is therefore favored by Anne’s mother as Anne’s future husband. Anne herself prefers the wealthy, soft-featured Fenton (Ben Cherry), though her feelings, as you might guess, are of little importance here.

The show falters only in the final scene, when Falstaff receives his final come-uppance and Anne gets married. Both events seem anti-climactic, as though the show ran out of energy before it got there. Anne’s side-plot, in particular, seems like it doesn’t even fit with the rest of the play.

Aside from that, though, the show remains a consistently amusing, often laugh-out-loud-funny affair. And, what’s more, no actual affairs ever take place.

When a perfectly good musical version of “Peter Pan” already exists, you have to wonder why the Utah Shakespearean Festival would do a brand-new one.

The answer: Because festival founder and executive producer Fred C. Adams wrote it. He directed it, too, and while we love him for starting the festival 38 years ago, we have to reprove him for thrusting this vapid, awkwardly staged semi-musical upon us.

Of course, we’re not expecting, well, Shakespeare with “Peter Pan.” It’s a children’s show (itself a curiosity, since children under 5 aren’t allowed at festival performances anyway), and is thus allowed to be simple and cartoonishly acted. Those things are charming.

Also charming are Janet L. Swenson’s vibrant costumes and George Maxwell’s magnificent sets. Seeing actors fly is always a little magical, too, even when you’re a grown-up and know how it’s done. There are some neat stage tricks besides the flying, like cramming 10 people into a tiny house and having smoke suddenly appear from a non-existent chimney. And we should mention that Nana the dog is played by a person (Michael Chmiel) inside an enormous dog costume. These things are indicative of the child-like sense of fun and fantasy that should pervade the whole show.

Unfortunately, the fun stops with the technical elements. The script itself is strangely dialogue-heavy and slow-moving. The first scene in the Darling family’s bedroom, when Peter Pan (Jered Tanner) arrives and whisks the children off to Neverland, should be an expository scene, used to establish the characters and get the show off and moving. But no. It lasts forever, and it’s not the only scene to do so.

The show in general is more talk than action, so that by the time we actually get to the big showdown between Peter and Captain Hook (Jonathan Gillard Daly), we hardly care anymore. Our senses have been dulled by the lack of excitement up to that point.

Then there’s the songs, which appear too infrequently to make this a full-blown musical. The songs are all simple-minded, both musically and lyrically, too short to be worthwhile even if they were good, and usually random-sounding and out of place. (Peter calls Hook a “codfish,” and then they sing a song about that. Not even a regular musical would waste time singing a song about such a trifling detail. Well, Gilbert and Sullivan might have, but no one else.)

Children might be entertained by the colorful costumes and the flying. The acting is enthusiastic and animated throughout, too, the performers clearly outshining the material they’ve been handed. But kids are going to want some action if they’re going to sit still for nearly 2 1/2 hours. And their parents are going to wish they’d just stayed home and rented the old Disney cartoon instead.

The Utah Shakespearean Festival’s “War of the Roses,” an adaptation of “Henry VI Parts 1, 2 and 3,” is an ambitious, noble effort at putting these three rarely produced plays on the stage.

Written by Howard Jensen, who also directed, the adaptation condenses at least nine hours’ worth of material down to a festival-length three hours, basically cramming Parts 1 and 2 into the first act, with Part 3 filling the second.

The final product is one that only the most serious of Shakespeare aficionados will enjoy. The problem is that the task of abridging three already-difficult plays into one is simply too large, perhaps even impossible.

Jensen has stayed as true as he could to the original plots and characters, letting almost everyone have at least a few minutes onstage rather than cutting them altogether (though a few do receive that fate). The result, especially in the first act, is that just as we’re getting interested in some sequence of events, it ends, to make room for the next one.

Lord Talbot (Alex Moggridge), for example, is a courageous warrior in the battles between England and France that weave throughout the trilogy, and the only real hero in Part 1. He dies in that play, after having done much for England and having defeated the evil witch called Joan of Arc (Kathleen McCall).

In “The War of the Roses,” Talbot is dead in 30 minutes; Joan, 15 minutes after that. Things happen so quickly that there is no time to experience the emotions that Shakespeare intended. Which begs the question, why include them at all? If characters will be set up and then quickly dispatched, leaving no impact behind them, before the first act is even half-over, why not just cut them out altogether and focus on some more central idea?

The answer, I suspect, is that Jensen wanted to be faithful to the original. The festival could have just staged “Henry VI Part 3,” which is the meatiest of the trilogy and receives the most attention here. But then the festival couldn’t say it had performed EVERY ONE of the Bard’s works. With an adaptation that combines all three, no matter how hurriedly or ineffectually, they can say they’ve done them all, at least technically.

Unless you know the trilogy well, you’re unlikely to even know when this thing is going to end. By the 2 1/2-hour mark, so many people have come and gone, so many plots started and finished, that it will seem like the play could stop at any point and be as complete as it’s going to be.

To be fair, though, the actual ending is a deliciously ominous one, with the evil Richard (Michael A. Harding) — later the foul villain in “Richard III” — making clear his intentions not to let England’s newly won peace last very long, as he, too, seeks after the crown. Richard has emerged as such a great character that the main achievement of the play is in making you want to watch “Richard III” to see more of him.

I should point out that I was never bored with the play — but, then, I had just read the “Henry VI” trilogy a month earlier and was curious to see it staged. Many audience members trickled out before it was over, and some didn’t even make it back from intermission.

The test of who’s good and who’s not in this play is whether you remember them when it’s over. The tragic fate of good-hearted Gloucester (Anthony De Fonte), way back in the first act, is a memorable one, as is the fierce ambition of Queen Margaret (Corliss Preston). Her husband, the title character, making a cameo appearance in his own play, is played with appropriate weak-willed womanliness by Raymond L. Chapman.

Henry is a good man but a terrible leader, leading to the factions and crown-seekers who fill the play. His intentions are good; he just can’t carry them out.

The same can be said of Howard Jensen, whose desire to turn the “Henry VI” trilogy into something accessible is admirable, but ultimately a task too complicated to be achieved.

The Utah Shakespearean Festival’s production of “The Merchant of Venice” suffers a bit from poor casting in some roles, but benefits — ultimately far more greatly — from excellent casting in others.

The play has proved troublesome to many modern directors, as it was written at a time when anti-Semitism was the norm, and when forcing a Jew to convert to Christianity was seen as an act of grace and mercy, not the travesty we would see it as now.

How, then, to produce a play in which the main characters despise Jews openly, and in which the major reason the villain is considered a villain is that he’s Jewish?

Director Ina Marlowe has done wonders with Shakespeare’s words, making Shylock the Jew (Anthony De Fonte) the most sympathetic character. De Fonte’s performance captures perfectly the character’s situation: Hated by all the people of Venice because he is a rich Jew, he seeks revenge — a pound of flesh from Antonio (Richard Thomsen) — only when driven to it, his beloved daughter Jessica (Corliss Preston) whisked away by a Christian suitor.

Antonio, whose deep friendship with Bassanio (Mark Murphey) leads him to make the dreadful bargain with Shylock in behalf of his friend, doesn’t even try to apologize when his crimes against Shylock are listed. Shylock and his persecutors are both shown as imperfect, but the Christians are by far the worse perpetrators.

It may be a bit too politically correct, but it still serves as a viable interpretation of the play.

The best reason to watch the show, though, is Kathleen McCall as Portia. One is drawn to her immediately, as McCall portrays her like so many strong women we know in real life. She trash-talks her ridiculous suitors, swoons giddily over Bassanio and takes charge of a courtroom to save Antonio. The more one sees her, the more one likes everything about her.

Earning tremendous laughs in his one scene is Danforth Comins as the pompous Prince of Arragon, one of Portia’s suitors.

Where the production suffers is in the roles of Antonio and Bassanio. Their friendship should be deep and powerful, as it is that bond that sets off all the action in the play. But Thomsen, as Antonio, is at least 20 years older than Murphey’s Bassanio, and they never exhibit anything more than superficial affinity for one another. It is doubtful these men would even associate, let alone be I-would-die-for-you best friends.

Furthermore, while the idea of making Antonio somewhat flawed in order to make Shylock sympathetic is a reasonable one, Thomsen takes it too far. Line after line is spoken about what a great man Antonio is, but Thomsen fails to convey that. Indeed, when he stands in court about to lose his life, he is bitterly apathetic, not a dignified martyr.

If you’ve never seen the play before, the courtroom scene is as exciting and full of reversals as any modern-day legal thriller.

In fact, despite its casting flaws, this is a thought-provoking, richly layered play, as dramatic as it is comedic, and as troubling as it is enjoyable.

Sundance’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” pulls off the feat of being a traditional, non-flashy staging of the familiar show, while simultaneously being broadly acted and crowd-pleasing, keeping the emotions close to the surface.

Largely responsible for this is Michael Rupert as Tevye, the poor Jewish dairyman in turn-of-the-century Russia who tryies to cling to his traditions even while the world around his small village is changing. Rupert never lets us forget for a moment that he is PERFORMING, speaking almost every one of his lines (especially the jokes) directly to the audience in a wry, self-aware, almost smug mannger.

To his credit, he squeezes laughs out of lines that are written funny but that don’t often get laughs; the problem is, he often squeezes too hard. He holds the audience in the palm of his hand. Whether his methods of doing that are honest, from a theatrical standpoint, is another matter, but perhaps an irrelevant one. The audience loves him; if he had to sacrifice the character’s depth and realism to get there, so be it.

The cast is a combination of professional and amateur actors (though all are being paid for their work), and some of the non-pros outshine their Actors’ Equity Association counterparts. Dianna Graham as oldest daughter Tzeitel, for example, shows an obvious knack for performing, even in subtle things like her part in the “Matchmaker” song. Her subtlety is a rare commodity in this show, especially when contrasted with Joan Barber as Golde, her mother, who hollers everything and doesn’t even TRY to do an accent.

Jennifer C. Ballif and Katie Redford Luther are also quite good as Tzeitel’s younger sisters. The girls’ suitors, Motel (Ary Farahnakian), Perchik (Steven Fales) and Fyedka (Jason Celaya), are well-cast, keenly conveying the characters’ respective attitudes and goals. Motel does seem a bit hyperactively goofy, but it’s kind of endearing.

The choreography by Peter Anastos is fantastic, expertly combining modern musical-theater movement with traditional Jewish dancing. Ryan T. Murphy’s musical direction also aids immeasurably to the show’s energy.

Long-time fans of the show may wish for a little more emotion and intimacy. But first-timers will be pleased with the show’s slickness and its clear (and mostly successful) desire to win over the audience completely.

Salt Lake Acting Company’s annual mish-mash of barbed satire and flat-out rudeness winds up, for the second year in a row, too heavy for its own good and not nearly funny enough.

“Saturday’s Voyeur 2000,” as this year’s offering is called, focuses on the LDS Church’s recent sale of ZCMI. Taking place in the basement of ZCMY, an utterly fictional store that has recently been sold to a bunch of Jews (or Gentiles, as the Mormons call them), the story centers around Frank Einstein (Kurt Proctor), a Mormon convert who used to be Jewish who is becoming more and more disenchanted with things since the store was sold. He confides his troubles in the mannequins who inhabit the basement, who themselves are worried about being moved onto the sales floor and having their nipples filed down (referring to an old legend that ZCMI would do this in its stores to make the mannequins more modest).

This “filing” process becomes a metaphor for all conformity. Mormon or not, becoming like everyone else in Utah is the same as having your nipples filed down. (Well, it makes sense in the play. Kind of.)

Also hiding out in the basement whenever possible are a gay couple of employees (Spencer Ashby, Robert Bogue), and two bold female employees (Annette Wright, Toni Lynn Bird), one of whom is a Catholic and the other of whom is a lapsed Mormon.

The Mormons in the story are either dim-witted — like the naive Sister Sandy (Marilyn Alldredge) — or creepy and evil — like the two managers, Parley Pope (Ashby) and Farley Pratt (Bogue).

The music for the show comes almost entirely as parodies of showtunes, borrowing from “Cats,” “Bye Bye Birdie,” “Little Shop of Horrors,” and “Jekyll & Hyde,” to name a few. There’s also a hysterical “White Man Mambo #5” (“Take no steps left and two steps right”), and a vicious Gayle Ruzicka skewering (to the tune of “Livin’ la Vida Loca”).

The parody lyrics are often amateurish, though, sticking too close to the originals and merely changing one or two words — or sometimes none at all. Clearly parody-writing is not the forte of Nancy Borgenicht and Allen Nevins.

Social satire is their forte, but “Saturday’s Voyeur 2000” does not utilize it well enough. Many of the jokes comes across as more bitter than funny, and while they’ve nailed the Mormon dialect (“‘Preciate ya sa-much”), some of the targets are awfully broad and easy to hit — not to mention the straw-man tactic of the ZCMI nipple-filing legend, which probably isn’t true anyway, thus putting a parody of it on shaky ground.

From a theatrical standpoint, the show suffers from over-length and claustrophobia. Set entirely in the basement of ZCMY, there can be very little physical action. And since the mannequins only talk to each other, the humans usually just do soliloquies. Fine for a while, but not for 2 1/2 hours.

“Saturday’s Voyeur” is by nature a hit-or-miss prospect. This year it’s a miss, but maybe next year will be more fruitful.

A little cartoonish, a little ridiculous, but also a little sweet here and there, Tuacahn’s production of “Fiddler on the Roof” is liable to charm audiences by sticking pretty close to the traditional show everyone’s familiar with, while still making some use of the spectacular outdoor red-rock theater.

Tuacahn forces its directors to incorporate the expensive flash-flood special effect into at least one show every year. This time, “Fiddler” got the shaft (only, I’m guessing, because no one could figure out a way to work a flood into “The Music Man”), and director Tim Threlfall does what he can to include it in as honest a way as possible.

Still, it’s a senseless addition that makes the show’s climax far more melodramatic than it should be. Tuacahn needs to get over the fact that they have a flash-flood effect, and only use it when the situation warrants it. If anyone’s buying tickets just to see the stage get covered in water, well, they need to re-think their theater-going priorities.

On the other hand, the dream sequence — in which Tevye (Lowell V. Noel) convinces Golde (Cathy Gene Greenwood) to bypass traditional matchmaking methods and let Tzeitel (Katharine Matis) marry Motel (Joey Khoury) — has never been more chilling. Groups of white-masked ghouls dance around, flourescent, shrieking ghosts appear out of nowhere, and a sheet of water, colored by light, blasts up in the background. It’s spectacle, not just for spectacle’s sake, but because the scene calls for whatever extravagence is possible. At Tuacahn, that’s a lot.

Lowell V. Noel is uneven as Tevye, the happy, complaining turn-of-the-century Russian Jew who must decide which traditions can be modified to fit the changing times, and which must be adhered to. He’s cartoonish at times — specifically, he’s Fred Flintstone, bellowing “Gol-DE!” instead of “Wil-MA!” — but he also makes some nice switches when the mood turns serious and he deals with conflicts with his love-struck daughters.

His train-station scene with Hodel (Melinda Larson), leaving to visit her imprisoned fiance Perchik (Javen Tanner) in Siberia, is genuinely touching. He and Cathy Gene Greenwood as Golde also break down their Ralph-and-Alice-Kramden relationship long enough to do a very sweet “Do You Love Me?” number.

The acting in general is broad (perhaps a natural tendency on that huge stage out in the canyon); the biggest perpetrator there is Yente the matchmaker (Terry Palasz), who says almost all of her lines directly to the audience. Others do this occasionally, too, and all of the daughters seem to lose their Russian accents when they sing. The Rabbi (Daniel Law) is goofy, too, an outrageously old and stooped figure who looks like a guy in disguise.

Generally, though, the show does what it’s supposed to, and the bigness of the production doesn’t limit its intimacy. “To Life” is exuberant and wild; “Sunrise, Sunset” is melancholy and wistful. There are just enough you’ll-only-see-this-at-Tuacahn elements to make it worth seeing here as opposed to somewhere else.

If you miss the “Utah!” pageant that used to be performed at the Tuacahn Amphitheatre, go see “The Music Man.” It’s the closest thing to a pageant that’s appeared there since they switched to regular musicals a couple years ago.

This is not, mind you, a good thing. “Pageant” acting means the acting is broad, boisterous and lifeless. Actors speak their lines accurately, but with little sense of comic timing, subtlety, levels or character.

The result? The songs are great. Legendary Utah actor Max Robinson plays con-man Harold Hill with energy and flair, and he and his co-stars enunciate extremely well through the show’s many fast-paced, cleverly written tunes. Brent Schneider’s choreography, while often cheesy (every song ends with all the townspeople’s hands up in the air), is nonetheless enjoyable to watch, thanks to a talented crew of dancers.

The problem, then, is everything BETWEEN the songs. The humor in this show, about small-town American in the 1910s, should come from the endearing, slightly odd characters, from the blustery Mayor Shinn to the fiesty Irish widow Paroo. The lines are often corny by themselves; it takes skillful characterization on the part of the actors to make them funny.

These actors, though, bless their hearts, are just going through the motions. They’re doing it enthusiastically, to be sure, but everything comes across as pure fluff — and unfunny fluff, at that. Marian the librarian (Melinda Larson) sings beautifully, but is positively dead during the moments when she’s supposed to be reconciling her love for Harold with her knowledge that he’s a fraud. She says the lines that indicate slowly changing feelings, but there are no feelings in them.

The other moment of actual emotion in this light-hearted show is when Harold learns that Marian could have exposed him right from the start, but didn’t, because she loves him. Robinson plays that moment nicely, most likely because he’s a good actor, and not because of anything director John Caywood told him. Caywood seems more interested in making the show big than in making it good, directing his actors with practically no eye for humor. There are fireworks at the end of Act II, but for no reason. There are also geysers of water that shoot out of the ground when Harold’s being chased through town, also for no reason.

Robinson’s Harold Hill is charismatic in his singing, as mentioned. But between songs, he doesn’t let us get to know him, much less LIKE him. To some extent, the show is written so that he remains a bad guy until the love of a good woman changes him. But it is possible to make the guy likable, even while we’re not sure we trust what he’s doing. He is, after all, a con man: He should be able to make the audience like him as much as the townspeople do. Robinson somehow accomplishes the dubious goal of being simultaneously charismatic and flat.

That’s the whole show, in fact: charismatic but flat. Plenty of enthusiasm, plenty of talent, but not enough direction in the acting to make it memorable.

The Desert Star Playhouse has adapted to its temporary outdoor location like troupers, giving the actors body microphones (which wouldn’t be such a bad idea in their regular theater, actually) and making the audience as much a part of the show as ever.

The bad news is, “Salute to America and Other Election Year Bloopers” suffers from the weakest of plots and an over-long script.

This show is free of the post-show Olio that usually rounds out the DSP experience to 2 hours — and yet the show is still 2 hours. How? Well, the second act, especially, is packed full of Olio-type numbers that are neither funny nor especially entertaining. All they do is slow down the mayhem.

The story is that Penny Print (Kathleen Richardson, over-acting in an embarrassing, Road Show style), a reporter for the Desert Star Gazette Murray News Tribune, is assigned to cover the 2000 presidential campaign. She develops an enemy in Monica Lou Enski (Julie Ann Christensen), a villain who wants to sabotage all the candidates so that the man of her choosing can be president. (Guess who it is.)

So John McCain (Randy Tayler) keeps getting taken hostage, and the others drop out one-by-one. (Orrin Hatch: “I’m busier than a one-legged missionary in a tracting contest.”)

The show is peppered with hilarious moments, and dragged down by dull musical numbers, several of which are mystifyingly pointless. Bill Clinton (Scott Holman, also co-writer and co-director) introduces the show, assuring us that “if you’re like me and you don’t really follow politics,” you’ll still enjoy it.

This is followed by a beauty pageant featuring the main contenders (Al Gore’s hobby: “whittling”), the winner of which, George W. Bush (Holman again), becomes a contestant on “Who Wants to Be the President.”

The stand-out performer is Mary Parker Williams, who plays Elizabeth Dole, a Southern belle, Hillary Clinton and a feisty Primary teacher. Every moment she is onstage, she is hysterical, tossing herself willy-nilly into whatever character she’s playing.

Most of the candidates get their own songs, too, including a highly amusing and tearful number by loser John McCain. Ross Perot (Holman again) and Jesse Ventura (Tayler again) also have a scene that devolves into a water-wienie fight. The scene in which McCain, Bush and Gore (Murphy again) visit an LDS Primary class is classic, particularly with the addition of a marvelously peppy Elian Gonzalez (Jonathon Phipps).

So it’s hit or miss, and more so than usual. The funny moments are indeed funny, but there are too many others that make the show drag on too long. Just like the campaign itself, I guess.

SCERA’s Jerry Elison-directed production of “Brigadoon” is a faithful re-creation of any other production of “Brigadoon” you’ve ever seen, except for a few lines that have been updated for the year 2000.

What has not been touched is the show’s romantic feel — and that description is both positive and negative.

“Brigadoon” is based on the idea that romance (i.e., love) can conquer all — “If you love someone enough, anything is possible, even miracles,” says one of the characters. That includes, apparently, miracles that contradict other miracles and that fly in the face of all reason.

Which is the other definition of “romantic”: imaginative but impractical; pleasant but unrealistic. Bored businessman Tommy (Tony Cobb) and cynical alcoholic Jeff (Shawn Lynn) stumble upon the Scottish village of Brigadoon, which they come to find has had a miraculous spell placed upon it: It disappears for a century at a time, reappearing for only one day every 100 years. Tommy and Jeff happened to have found it on that one day, and while Jeff is warding off the advances of horny milkmaid Meg (Amanda Scheffer), Tommy is falling for cute blonde Fiona (Megan Mack Christensen).

The rule is that an outsider can stay in Brigadoon if he loves one of its inhabitants. Tommy loves Fiona — but does he have enough faith in this incredible miracle to leave behind his life back in New York? To do so is romantic in both senses of the word: motivated by love, and also incredibly impractical.

By the end, the show breaks its own carefully explained rules of who can and can’t come and go in Brigadoon. The coy and mincing teen-age sulker Harry Beaton (Oliver Gaag) tried to leave and got killed for it, but Tommy seems able to return because he loves Fiona a lot. Again, romance.

OK, whatever. It’s a romantic show with some beautiful songs (most notably the unfortunately titled “Come to Me, Bend to Me”). This production is marked by excellent singing voices and a decidedly unhurried pace, most evident in Tommy, played with great moping and inexpression by Tony Cobb.

There is more to good singing, though, than just hitting the notes. Without passion or emotion — or at least some romantic chemistry between the characters — the songs just get in the way of the story. That is often what happens here.

Shawn Lynn livens things up as the wise-cracking Jeff, and Amanda Scheffer is certainly a hoot as Meg, singing about the drunken brawl that erupted at her parents’ wedding — a strange moment that is second only to her downright smutty “Love of My Life” song, in which she sings of her legendary promiscuity. (“We skirmished for hours at night in the glen,” she sings of her affair with a soldier. “And I found the sword was much mightier than the pen.” Wow! At the SCERA!)

The rest of the cast ambles along with enthusiasm and some considerable talent, tucked away in the supporting roles.

Brigadoon is a strange place, and “Brigadoon” is a strange show. Fiona says, “There’s a difference between romancing a girl and just being sentimental because you’re tired.” I think that at one point, the 54-year-old “Brigadoon” was quite capable of romancing its audience. Now, though, it’s just sentimental and tired.

Whether or not you’ll enjoy the Salt Lake Community College production of “Brigadoon,” playing through Sept. 26 at the Grand Theatre on the SLCC campus, depends on whether or not you like “Brigadoon” at all.

“Brigadoon” is one of those “classic” musicals by Lerner and Lowe that is on the order of “My Fair Lady,” “The King and I” and “Carousel” — either you like that style of musical theater or you don’t. For many of the younger generation, louder and faster-paced musicals like “Rent” and “Phantom of the Opera” may be preferable to an old romantic tale like “Brigadoon,” and this production doesn’t really even try to bridge that generation gap (not that is necessarily should — some things are best left as they were originally intended).

For those unfamiliar with the story, it is as follows: Tommy (Shawn Maxfield) and Jeff (Kevin Gollaher), two Americans, are hiking in the woods of Scotland when they stumble upon the unmapped city of Brigadoon. The inhabitants are dressed as though they were living 200 years ago, and indeed we soon find that to be the case. Through some kind of mystical, heavenly, miraculous means, the city of Brigadoon was enchanted a couple centuries back so that it now disappears for 100 years at a time and then reappears for only one day. To the townsfolk, that 100 years is as but a night — they go to bed, and when they wake up the next day, the rest of the world has advanced 100 years, whereas they are only a day older.

As you might expect, Tommy falls in love with local pretty gal Fiona (Kristine Jorgensen) and, once he learns the secret of the town, must decide whether to stay and leave his whole life (including a fiancee) behind, or to go back to the regular world and never see Fiona again (well, unless he lives another 100 years and catches her the next time Brigadoon comes around). The amusingly alcoholic Jeff doesn’t believe any of it anyway, and, like any good friend, he persuades Tommy NOT to follow his heart, and the two go back to New York.

Don’t worry, though. Everything winds up happily, except for Tommy’s aforementioned New York fiancee (Giselle LaVoie), who is rather bewildered by Tommy’s wistful behavior and glassy-eyed stares.

It’s a romantic, illogical story that also contains more than a little oddness — like the melodramatic Brigadoon youth Harry Beaton (Joshua Madsen) who wants to leave the town and is semi-accidentally killed for trying. His somber, bagpipe-accompanied funeral procession comes immediately after the aggressively perky Meg (Peggy Ruth Deming) sings a delightful song about the drunken revelry and fist-fighting that went on at her parents’ wedding.

But it’s the music and the love story in “Brigadoon” that have enchanted theater-goers for several decades, and both of those elements are treated nicely in this production. All the principals have beautiful and clear singing voices, and famous numbers like “Heather on the Hill” and “Almost Like being in Love” are as lovely as you remember them.

Some of the dancing seems a bit superfluous, bordering on what appears to be interpretive dance sometimes, and almost calisthetic other times (it’s Richard Simmons’ “Sweatin’ to the Celtics”!). You haven’t really experienced life until you’ve seen a woman do interpretive dance while placing a flower on a dead body while a bagpipe plays.

Like Brigadoon itself, “Brigadoon” is a relic from a bygone era. The structure, the musical style, the simple and romantic plot — these are things we don’t see much of in modern musical theater. Whether that’s good or bad is all a matter of perspective, but this production of “Brigadoon” is a relatively solid one.

While the main purpose of Valley Center Playhouse’s “Beyond Karaoke” seems to be to promote the Utah County-based karaoke company that sponsors it (their catalog is distributed with the play’s program), there’s also a reasonably entertaining show in there, too.

Bryce (Davison Cheney, also director and de facto writer) is the depressed owner of a dumpy bar and grill in Mojave, Calif. He and his sister, the brassy Tammy (Jenifer Pope), run the place, having inherited it from their uncle Mike a few years ago.

Assisting them are Randy (M. Casey Reeves), a carefree young fellow; and Lisa (Kiri Price-Reeves), a timid gal who can’t mix drinks and has a mysterious past.

Not assisting them are any customers to speak of. Randy suggests adding karaoke as an attraction, and Bryce happens to have some karaoke tapes. (I asked the play why Bryce has a box full of tapes consisting of just music, with the vocals all removed and ready for karaoke singing, but the play didn’t answer me.)

The only problem with this plan is that the customers, when they do show up, aren’t courageous enough to get up and sing. So the four employees start doing it themselves, which leads to a full-blown show in which they dress as and impersonate famous singers, all in the hopes of raising enough money to save the bar from foreclosure.

That aspect — “Let’s put on a show to save the (fill in the blank)!” — is a classic musical-theater plot device, and it’s the only thing about “Beyond Karaoke” that is traditional. There is no incidental singing: The characters only burst into song when they’re performing karaoke.

The comedy premise here is that singing familiar songs is funny, and even more so if you add choreography, and even more-more so if you dress up like the original singers, and even more-more-more so if the original singers are not the same gender as you. To the extent that you find this premise funny, the show is amusing.

Cheney does a very funny (and subtly accurate) impression of Louie Armstrong; Reeves and Price-Reeves do a delightful Sonny & Cher, too. Other artists impersonated during the 20-minute karaoke medley finale include Madonna, Vanilla Ice, Michael Jackson and Kool & the Gang.

The script, originally by John Driscoll but heavily altered by Cheney, ranges wildly from the lame to the clever. Lisa’s backstory is ridiculous, and Randy’s attraction to her is more obligatory than anything. But there are also some witty exchanges here and there, particularly dealing with Bryce’s inexplicable cluelessness when it comes to pop culture of the last 20 years. (He asks if Milli Vanilli were “related to Liza Minelli,” and when his sister suggests a medley of songs by heavy-metal group Iron Maiden, he says, “Why do you have to bring Mom into this?”)

Overall, though the show ain’t exactly a masterpiece, it’s certainly enjoyable in a simple, fluffy kind of way. Give everyone credit for giving it their all in a show that is, essentially, a 2-hour commercial for a karaoke company.

Springville Playhouse’s production of the gimmick-farce “Black Comedy” is a comical, fast-paced treat.

Would-be artist Brindsley (Brett Merritt) has several things happening all on the same night. His girlfriend Carol (Cyndi Ball) is bringing her military “monster father” (Blaine Sundrud) over, in the hopes of getting his permission for Brindsley and Carol to get married. Also coming over is renowned patron of the arts Georg Bamberger (James McGregor), whom Brindsley hopes will buy some of his art. And because Brindsley is poor and his apartment sparsely furnished, he has borrowed the tasteful decor of his out-of-town neighbor, Harold (Jake Suazo), in order to impress his future father-in-law and the art guy.

Naturally, Harold doesn’t stay out of town long enough, and Brindsley’s ex-girlfriend Clea (Rachel Kimsey), who isn’t totally aware she’s his EX-girlfriend, shows up, too.

Standard farce material so far. What gives “Black Comedy” its twist is that the first 10 minutes of the show take place with the stage in darkness. To the characters, however, everything is normal. Then there’s a power failure, and all the lights go out – meaning, in this backward stage gimmick, the stage lights come ON. Now we see the characters stumbling around in the “dark,” arriving and leaving without each other’s knowledge, and narrowly missing bumping into each other. Every time someone lights a match, or any other small source of light is introduced, the stage lights dim a little bit, and the characters can see. When the matches go out, or the flashlight is turned off, the lights come back to full brightness, and everyone is blind again.

It’s a clever idea, and playwright Peter Shaffer (who also wrote the somewhat more highbrow “Amadeus” and “Equus”) does everything he can with it. When the “he’s-gay-but-we’re-not-saying-so” Harold returns unexpectedly, Brindsley and Carol intentionally stall getting the lights back on so that Brindsley can silently sneak all of Harold’s furniture back to his apartment – right under his nose. And Brindsley’s discovery that Clea has returned is outrageously funny.

The cast, performing on a special preview night with a tiny audience, performed admirably. When the crowd is few in numbers, an actor’s tendency is to pull back: No sense in going whole-hog, making a fool of yourself, when the laughs are going to sound small either way. But Brett Merritt as Brindsley fell over as much furniture and behaved as frantically as required, and Cyndi Ball’s baby-talking debutante Carol was as shriekish and giddy as ever. The rest of the cast (which also includes David Nugent as a philosophizing electrician and Janel Crane as the prim and proper Mrs. Furnival) also performed with enthusiasm and aplomb, and generally with good comic timing.

Hale Center Theater’s production of “M is for the Million” is eminently enjoyable and boldly silly, thanks mostly to an earnest cast that knows the best way to be funny in a farce is by not trying too hard.

The show’s quality certainly doesn’t come from Jack Sharkey’s script, which is approximately like every farce you’ve ever seen, only not as good. It has some funny lines and some highly amusing situations, but it also has several leaps in logic that are too hard to swallow, even for a farce. (It’s also poorly constructed, with a 35-minute first act followed by an hour-long second act.)

The action takes place on a cruise ship in 1935, where Bradley (Brinton Wilkins) and Meg (Cindy Winkel) are about to be married and embark on their honeymoon. Complications arise when Meg’s snooty mother, Lenore (Kim Wares), arrives onboard, and when it’s revealed that Meg is not Meg at all, but Edith Baxter, the famed advice columnist who is also engaged to Hamilton Cabot III (Peter Biggs), who is the ship’s captain.

The “million” of the title refers to a clause in Meg’s dead father’s will, which may indeed be the most convoluted and stupid will in the history of fictitious wills. It states that Meg will inherit $1 million if she is married by age 25 (which is tomorrow!), but only if she doesn’t KNOW she’s going to inherit the money, ’cause if she knew about it, she might rush into getting married just to get the loot, and a rushed marriage would be bad (even though every single character in this play seems willing to get hitched to total strangers at the drop of a hat, thank you very much, Mr. Sharkey). If she doesn’t get married, her mom gets the money, a fact which delights her oily suitor, the extremely Greek Dimitrios (Nathan Wright).

As mentioned, it’s the energetic cast that makes the show work. Brinton Wilkins is very charismatic as Brad, and Cindy Winkel’s Meg is also quite likable. The two of them make a nice, realistic couple — unusual for such a goofy show.

Kim Wares and Nathan Wright prove that dedication to one’s character, no matter how outlandish, will always pay off. As Meg’s debutante mom and her slick paramour, respectively, they earn many laughs simply by being who they are. Many actors would back down at having to go so over-the-top with these roles, but Wares and Wright stay with it all the way through.

Rounding out the cast are Scott Champion as the floppy-armed, occasionally moustached ship steward; Claire Wilkins as Maisie, his talkative fiancee; Carrie Hill as Olympia, Lenore’s Argentine maid; and Lawton Smith as an African missionary who shows up to perform numerous marriage ceremonies at the end.

After the show ends, the cast comes back for a shortened version of the play, with everyone running around, duplicating their actions in the show and swing dancing while they’re doing it. This is a swell idea, and it shows the cast’s enthusiasm, but it goes on for too long. If it were sped up, it would be darn near perfect, and a great way to end the show.

Still, the show is funnier than it deserves to be, and quite an entertaining way to spend the evening. (Warning: This show contains a man in a wedding gown.)

Don’t let the title fool you: Yes, there are bedrooms in this play, but no monkey business takes place in any of them. There’s not much farce, either, though there is quite a bit of gentle absurdity and laugh-out-loud comedy.

Written by legendary British playwright Alan Ayckbourn, “Bedroom Farce” tells of four married couples who are at different stages in their relationships, and whose lives intersect over the course of an evening.

First we meet Ernest (Dan Hess) and Delia (Susan Whitenight), a perfectly quaint middle-aged couple celebrating their anniversary. They are fretting over their son, Trevor (Matt Biedel), a rather dense, insensitive fellow who’s having problems with his wife, Susannah (Amy Dawn Addams), the emotional equivalent of a plane crash. Mom and Dad think Trevor should have married his first love, Jan (Jjana Valentiner Morrill), and Trevor certainly still pines for her. But Jan has married Nick (Ary Farahnakian), a whining businessman currently laid up in bed with a strained back.

While at a housewarming party for the ridiculously playful Malcolm (Casey Paul Griffiths) and Kate (Emmelyn Thayer), Susannah walks in on Trevor kissing Jan. The rest of the play is the aftermath: Susannah goes to talk it out with Delia; Trevor first plans to stay overnight at Malcolm and Kate’s, then goes to Jan and Nick’s to apologize to Nick. And so the entire play takes place in the bedrooms of Ernest and Delia, Malcolm and Kate, and Nick and Jan, all seen side-by-side on the stage.

Susan Whitenight and Dan Hess are perfect as the oldest of the four couples, brilliantly portraying a nice, lived-in relationship. They are very much in love, but are content to discuss the leak in their roof and eat sardines and toast in bed, rather than whispering sweet nothings. This is what every couple hopes to be in 20 years.

Emmelyn Thayer’s Kate is sweetly, smilingly sardonic, polite and charming as she puts others in their places. Thayer, one of BYU’s most graceful beauties, has her comic timing down to a science, and it is only she, Whitenight and Hess whose British accents are consistently good. (Everyone else is hit-or-miss. It’s funny, actually, considering how much talent is in the cast, to think that the British accent is their collective Achilles heel.)

Jjana Valentiner Morrill, a veritable workhorse in BYU theater — she seems to be in every mainstage show, every student project, and every staged reading that comes around — is compelling as Jan, the woman at the center of all the conflict. She still has feelings for Trevor, but loves her husband, too. His current condition of whining and falling around (which Farahnakian does with much humor and physical agility), along with Trevor’s advances, gives her cause to reassess things. Jan is the most complex person in the play, with more to think about than anyone else, and Morrill keeps her feelings close to the surface without fully exposing them. The subtlety is a nice choice, and deftly played by Morrill.

This is the rare small-cast show in which there are no bit parts. All eight actors are given ample opportunity to shine, and while experience causes some to stand out more than others, all eight command the stage at one point or another — from Susannah’s sudden tearful, raccoon-faced entrance, to Malcolm’s off-stage fury at trying to build something from a kit. This is a charismatic, likable group of performers, doing a show that will make you laugh a lot and think just a little.

What makes “Fiddler on the Roof” such a long-time favorite is that, even though its old-fashioned Jewish characters struggling to keep their traditions in the face of rapid change are far removed from most of our situations, the play has an emotional center that is universal. We all have had to accept changes that were beyond our control, most of us have wrestled with some aspect of our faith, and all parents have wondered how their children grew up so fast.

The Villa Playhouse production of “Fiddler,” alas, keeps everything on the surface, never plunging into the emotions that should propel the action and keep the audience interested. The actors say the lines that indicate their feelings, but there is no sense that they actually have those feelings.

The result is that, while the large cast (40-plus people) sings and acts with vigor, the production is too silly — almost farcical at times — to take it very seriously. And at 2 hours and 45 minutes, it’s too long not to be getting something out of it.

Some aspects are meant to be funny, of course. Tevye’s (David Haenlein) conversations with God are charming bits, and his relationship with his wife, Golde (Joyce Booth), is only intended to be romantic or sweet when they sing “Do You Love Me?” (which in this production really is a nice moment). And of course many songs like “To Life” should be extremely joyful and light-hearted.

The problem here is that nothing is ever less than light-hearted for more than a few moments. When Motel (Brian McFadyen) and Tzeitel (Esther Covington) approach Tevye about the possibility of breaking tradition and getting married without use of a matchmaker, the scene is sitcom-y and goofy. So when Tevye has his monologue and decides to let them go ahead, the decision seems too easy. Where was the huge internal struggle? Where was his balancing his love for his daughter with his devotion to tradition? The lines indicating such a conflict were there, but there was no conviction behind them — plus we’d just seen three minutes of silliness immediately proceeding it, and the change in attitude is too abrupt.

Basically, this is “Fiddler on the Roof,” played as a comedy, with brief bursts of seriousness that don’t work because they’re surrounded by too much levity, and because the actors keep being superficial, even when they’re saying deep things. If that suits you, fine. I think it betrays the original intent of the show.

As usual at the Villa, lighting is a problem, too. Even when the stage is “fully lit,” the sides are dark, and much action takes place there. They need to realize, also, that there are ways of signifying “night-time” besides just turning off most of the lights and making everyone act in the dark. For as light as this show is figuratively, it’s far too dark literally.

The singing is strong throughout, and the actors are generally committed to what they’re doing; there is some real talent here. This is community theater, and I don’t mean to sound like I’m judging it by Broadway standards. But even community theater can avoid the pitfall of trying to create humor where it doesn’t belong, and thereby failing to convey the show’s real emotions.

“Tradition” is the first song in “Fiddler on the Roof.” Tradition is also at the heart of the show’s theme and message. Tradition is also a dominant factor in the people’s lives in the Russian village of Anatevka.

Tradition is also why people keep going to see “Fiddler on the Roof” whether it’s any good or not.

The SCERA Shell Outdoor Theatre’s current production of the show, directed by Jerry Elison, is a big, lumbering beast of a show, with dozens of cast members tromping around the huge stage for nearly three hours. This is a show that should tug at the heartstrings a little, and that should make one feel a little sentimental, but ultimately this production fails to register much emotion at all.

Perhaps it was the rainy weather that dampened the spirits of the cast members the night I saw the show, but everyone seemed to be merely trudging through it. Even in the big dance numbers (“Tradition,” “To Life,” the wedding scene), dancers were stone-faced as they muddled through their clunky choreography, often embarrassingly out of step with each other. The choreography itself is pretty good — the dancers just need to show some enthusiasm while performing it. Smile a little, for crying out loud!

The show is not without its plusses. Neal Barth truly does bring Tevye to life, one of only a handful of cast members to really show much zeal for his part. He carries the show, with help from Syd Riggs as his wife, Golde. Their “Do You Love Me?” song is one of the few scenes that really connects emotionally with the audience.

“The Dream” is a fast-paced, crazy scene that demonstrates how good the show could have been if only that energy had been consistent throughout the whole production. The same goes for when the wedding threatens to turn into “The Jerry Springer Show,” with Tevye and Lazer Wolf (Bart Schaerrer) arguing over brides and chickens, and the whole town taking sides. You start to think, “Hey, NOW things are picking up!” — and then the show falls back into its rut again with another big, slow-moving dance number.

The three daughters (Katy Worlton, Angela Boyle and Alisa Green) show promise with their first song, “Matchmaker,” singing beautifully and with energy. But as they get bogged down with their various boyfriends and, eventually, husbands, their characters fade away and the audience stops caring about them. Tzeitel (Worlton) and Motel (Robinson Duffy) get one very nice scene together with “Miracle of Miracles,” and Tevye’s train station farewell with Hodel (Boyle) is sweet, but that’s about it. Everything else is just activity, just business, just movement and words, with precious little passion.

Pacing is a problem here. The time between scenes could be cut down — perhaps it will be as the show continues its run and the kinks gets worked out — but things could move a little quicker DURING the scenes, too. The show just seems so lifeless. Again, it could be the weather.

It doesn’t matter why, in the end. “Fiddler on the Roof” is such a well known and well loved show, people will see it anyway.

“Voices from Black Canyon: A Hoover Dam Kaleidoscope” is an avant-garde, experimental play depicting the horrid conditions under which the Hoover Dam was built during the Great Depression.

The BYU production, directed by Rodger Sorensen, plays its experimental nature to the hilt, with an ensemble cast delivering a highly stylized, presentational method of acting. Oh, and the whole thing is simultaneously performed in English and American Sign Language, too. (Why not?)

Surely there are interesting stories to tell about the men and their families behind the building of the dam, many of whom died during the process. But this play chooses not to tell them, instead focusing on the abstract and general: “You lie on your back, you can still hear the tunnel, you can smell the latrine,” says one nameless character, directly to the audience (namelessness and speaking directly to the audience are the play’s modus operandi). The image is effective, but rather than drawing us into the life of any particular worker, it makes it clear that this was how it was for everyone (“you”).

And so there is very little plot, except for this: The working conditions are ridiculously inhuman, with most of the workers and their families living in tents without running water, enduring blistering heat. The boss is more interested in building the dam in a hurry than in coddling his workers. If they quit, there are huge unemployment lines full of willing replacements.

So there’s an ineffectual strike that lasts six days. There’s also, curiously enough, a subplot about a brothel in which a doctor is allegedly giving the prostitutes placebos instead of the real medication they need for their venereal diseases. This helps establish the squalid lifestyle of the dam builders, if we needed more reassurance of it.

And that’s just the thing: We don’t need any more evidence that building the Hoover Dam was a dreadful experience. The program notes explain in detail what went on during that period, and the play doesn’t tell us anything more, making either the program or the play superfluous. The focus shouldn’t be how awful things were, and yet it is. There is precious little attention to individual stories, the human dramas that would make the play compelling. We are TOLD about the deaths of many people, but only one or two whom we are actually acquainted with (and even then, only superficially).

The play is often poetic, even lyrical, and there is often much beauty in its language. And while the show is unquestionably unusual, it does not come off as pretentious or weird-just-to-be-weird. The hard-working cast seems earnest about what they’re doing, and certainly deserves credit for that. Watching the play, though, is more of an academic endeavor than an enjoyable or thought-provoking night out at the theater.

Great Gardens! is a fictional buffet restaurant (think Golden Corral) that thinks so highly of itself, it puts an exclamation mark in its name.

“Great Gardens!” is a new comedy that cracks open the idiosyncracies of Mormon family life, but does it in a much more subtle, less self-aggrandizing manner. The family in this play is, at least to some degree, your family and mine, but “Great Gardens!” doesn’t scream that fact to us through broad satire or slapstick parody (even though Mormon culture would be an easy target for it). Instead, it presents the characters and all their quirks, and lets us slowly realize that, like it or not, we’re them and they’re us.

Written by Josh Brady two years ago at BYU, where it received a staged reading and then a small-scale production, “Great Gardens!” takes place in the titular restaurant in Houston. The family is celebrating the return of daughter Neilene (Susan Keller) from her LDS mission, and everyone’s got a satchel of problems to deal with.

The No. 1 problem is mom, Ilene (Reyna Ricks), the quintissential image-conscious Mormon Mom, worrying about whether the stake president, dining in the same restaurant, will notice her drinking a Diet Coke, or what people will think when they see the family sitting at the counter (which she says is a “bar”).

Ilene is a loving mother, but she hen-pecks everyone she can get her beak on. Suffering the brunt of it is her oldest son, Lyle (Nathan Mitchell), a returned missionary who has since been married and divorced and is now inactive and — the biggest embarrassment of all — doesn’t wear his garments anymore.

Lyle and Ilene spar constantly, especially when Ilene starts expressing undue concern over the weight Neilene may have gained while in England, and Lyle rushes to his sister’s defense.

Also in the family is sister Sariah (Brooklyn Hale), a 20-year-old who is showing every sign of becoming just like her mother. This doesn’t bode well for her fiance, the already-submissive Brook (Ben Sansom).

Finally, there’s dad Neil (Joel R. Wallin) and younger brother Jared (Mason Reed Lefler), who also take after each other. Neil is quiet most of the time, not because he’s been beaten into submission by Ilene, but because he’s learned to choose his battles wisely. (When he does fight her, he wins.) Jared earns some of the biggest laughs of the play simply by trying to eat his dinner, oblivious to the mayhem surrounding him.

Josh Brady has a keen ear for dialogue. The teens talk like teens, the Texans talk like Texans, and the Mormons talks like Mormons. Sarah complains about her hair being messed up in Lyle’s car on the way over, and about how she’s hungry. Finally she says, “Fine, I’ll just suffer,” to which Lyle adds, “In silence, please.” Ilene wants a taste of something Lyle’s eating, even though Lyle is all the way at the end of the counter — which means she passes her fork down the line to get a sample. Unable to see why no one wants to do this, she says, “You act like we asked you to poop a cantaloupe.”

The performances generally complement the excellent script (which, now that I’ve seen the play twice, has deeper nuances in the characters’ relationships than I’d thought). Ricks is outstanding as the huge-haired mother who slowly realizes that everything is not always about her, and Keller’s Neilene earns sympathy as the character who is the unwilling catalyst for most of the action.

The others give realism (mostly comic) to their roles, making the ensemble as a whole very strong. This family is a smorgasbord of dysfunction, and they’re a delight to watch.

In the Hale Centre Theatre production of “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” the audience says “oooooh” when Uber-chauvinist Adam Pontipee (Mark Knowles) says, “What do I need manners for? I already got me a wife.” Apparently, such unadulterated sexism is not to be tolerated.

And yet, audiences continue to go see “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” every time a theater produces it, despite the fact that it is perhaps one of the most sexist shows ever written. Maybe sexism is fine, as long as it’s accompanied by pretty singing and dancing; it’s only when it’s stated outright that it becomes a problem.

At any rate, Hale Centre Theatre’s production of the show is generally a solid one. Director Ron Jewett even manages to downplay some of the inherent chauvinism by making Adam an unsympathetic brute, and his six backwoods brothers a bunch of bumbling stooges. By comparison, Adam’s wife Milly (Meghan D. Parrish; normally played in this cast by Wendy Knowles) and the brothers’ six girlfriends/hostages come across as intelligent and strong — particularly Milly, whose sudden and inexplicable love for Adam almost seems plausible in this production, thanks to a commanding performance by Parrish.

Other stand-out characters are the jittery Caleb (Cary Charron) and laugh-snorting Sarah (Peggy Deming). The rest of the brothers and the girls, frankly, blend into one another rather seamlessly.

Hale Centre is famous for its state-of-the-art rotating stage, and it is used well in this show, without being overused (which would certainly be a tempation for me, if I had such a neat toy at my disposal). The avalanche effect is nothing short of amazing, and the effect by which the avalanche is removed at the scene change almost tops it.

The big scene in this show is generally the barn-raising/dance/fistfight with the brothers and the townspeople. There is some truly impressive dancing here, and the overall effect is good. But when you look at individual dancers and — especially — individual fistfights during the fracas, you notice that you’ve never seen anything that looked more fake and stagey.

That’s the show as a whole, in fact: impressive overall, but with much sloppiness in the individual moments. The “Love Never Goes Away” number, with Milly, Adam and Gideon (Eric B. Armstrong) all singing their differing views on love, is the emotional highlight of the show; but the breakfast scene in which Milly commandeers everyone’s underwear and then teaches them how to dance drags on endlessly. It’s a show that seems much better than the sum of its parts.

Inaugurating the Hale Centre Theatre West Valley’s intimate new Black Box Theatre is “The Goodbye Girl,” a merry piffle of a musical based on a merry piffle of a Neil Simon play.

The theater is small, seating only 120, making it fine for a small-scale show like this. Only a pianist (Kelly DeHaan) accompanies the singing, and the actors don’t even need microphones to be heard.

The story follows Paula (Jeni Carver), a single mom who is consistently unlucky at love. As we begin, she has just been left by Tony, the latest in a series of potential “new dads” for young daughter Lucy (Gina Rizzuto; double-cast with Caitlin Henriksen).

Paula has decided to give up on men altogether when Elliot Garfield (Mark Daniels), a joking, exasperating would-be actor, comes along. Due to a turn of events that could exist only in a Neil Simon play, Elliot winds up sharing the apartment with Paula and Lucy (seems Tony the loser sub-let the place to Elliot, and Paula has no place else to go).

Elliot and Paula’s dislike for one another eventually turns to romance, but Elliot still must earn her trust — and the trust of her little girl.

The Elliot character seems like he needs a little more obnoxiousness in the beginning; as it is, it’s not entirely clear why Paula doesn’t like him. (Martin Short won a Tony for playing the role on Broadway, and one can picture him being quite suitably pesky.) The lines are there in the script; Daniels just needs to turn up the abrasiveness a little.

His later scenes, though, as he softens and Paula warms up to him, are marvelous. One particular highlight is a park scene, in which Elliot sweetly convinces Lucy that he’s not going to leave her mom the way the other men have. Daniels and Rizzuto both shine there.

Carver is also a stand-out as Paula, giving the character strength and vulnerability simultaneously, and winning the audience’s sympathy right from the start. She also has a strong, belting voice that gives the songs energy.

Neil Simon wrote the book for this musical, and it shows, with Simon-y vaudeville-style lines like, “Do you have anything to drink? Like diet arsenic?”

And Marvin Hamlisch’s music sounds like the stuff he wrote in the ’70s and ’80s (“A Chorus Line” being a prime example): a bit gaudy and cheesy, for the most part, with some pep now and then.

David Zippel’s lyrics, however, are immensely satisfying. Zippel is an expert with the rhymes and witticisms, and his words make the songs (and the show as a whole) move along breezily.

“The Goodbye Girl” is entertaining, if not particularly meaningful. It’s a fine way to unwind on a weekend evening.

“The Foreigner” is performed fairly often by community theater groups, as it currently is by the Pleasant Grove Players, and with good reason: It’s terribly funny.

Set in a hotel lodge in rural Georgia, the play brings us Charlie Baker (Thane Bingham), a terribly shy man who has to stay there a few days while his friend Froggy (DeShawn Smith) is out on Army maneuvers.

He’s terrified of having to interact with the other visitors, so Froggy tells the sweet old innkeeper, Betty (Donna Bingham), that Charlie doesn’t speak any English. This keeps him from having to talk to anyone, and allows him some peace and quiet.

Except what it really means is that no one’s afraid to talk in front of him, thus inadvertently revealing their plots and schemes. By play’s end, “foreigner” Charlie has developed a personality, helped everyone else feel better about themselves, and saved the lodge from evil Klansmen (really!).

The ensemble cast is altogether pretty strong, though Thane Bingham is much more believable as a foreigner than he is as the regular Charlie. Dustin Harding stands out as young Ellard Simms, a dim kid whom Charlie helps to feel smart. Harding has an excellent sense of mad energy, bouncing around like a pro without seeming like a clown.

Dennis Purdie is also very funny as racist Owen Musser, a tightly wound idiot.

The production missteps just a little in not fully exploring the potential in Charlie’s dealings with the others. The play is written for him to help Betty feel like more than just a useless old lady; for him to help Ellard have confidence in his own intelligence; and for him to help Ellard’s sister Catherine (Tracy Fielding) boost her self-esteem. All of that happens here, but only if you pay close attention. In a few key places, the lines are spoken, but the “moment” is missed.

Still, the show is laugh-out-loud funny, particularly as Charlie begins to use his “foreignness” to his advantage, mocking the stupid and helping the meek. There is much community theater in Utah County, and the Pleasant Grove Players are often overlooked. If this show is any indication, they deserve a little more attention.

“42nd Street” was a Broadway show about people putting on a Broadway show. The Grand Theatre production of “42nd Street” comes pretty close to being a Broadway show itself, an ambitious, energetic delight with dozens of backdrops, sets, and costume changes.

There is also dancing. Tons of it. I freely admit to being a sucker for a show with good dancing, and “42nd Street” stops working on its feeble plot about every two minutes in order to have a big song-and-dance number. Director/choreographer Jim Christian has created routines that are snappy and lively, and he’s found a talented ensemble of dancers to carry them out.

The story is about the production of “Pretty Lady,” a Busby Berkeley-type musical that is supposed to be one of the biggest in Broadway history, thanks to mega-director Julian Marsh (Gary Neilson) being behind it, and Broadway super-diva Dorothy Brock (Alisa Harris-Aguilar) being at center stage.

Auditioning for the chorus is Peggy Sawyer (Amy Oakeson), a pretty, naive gal just off the train from Allentown, Pa., who barely makes it into the show. Her love interest, for approximately two seconds, is fellow cast member Billy Lawlor (Peter Russell). Their relationship fails because “42nd Street” writers Michael Stewart and Mark Bramble forgot to keep working on it: This show thrives on its singing and dancing, not on its plot, which is full of little holes like that.

We see the show through the rehearsal process, up to the first performance, during which Dorothy busts her ankle and Julian Marsh declares to the audience that the show has been canceled, and we can have our money refunded. He’s referring to “Pretty Lady,” of course, not “42nd Street,” but the effect is tremendously original and satisfying, especially because after he says that, the house lights come up and we go to intermission — a very anti-climactic way to end the first act of a Broadway musical!

Most of “42nd Street” parallels “Pretty Lady.” Nearly all of the songs we hear are actually numbers from the fictitious show we’re seeing from behind the scenes; it’s rare for the “42nd Street” characters to just burst into song (though it does happen occasionally).

And the songs are great. You’ll recognize numbers like “We’re in the Money,” “You’re Getting to be a Habit with Me,” “Lullaby of Broadway,” and of course the title song. The young, enthusiastic cast — particularly Neilson, Oakeson and Russell — performs with confidence, having absolutely no qualms saying ridiculous lines like, “You hoofers are the luckiest bunch in the whole darn business.”

“42nd Street” is a tribute to old-time Broadway musicals, and the Grand Theatre’s production is as handsome as can be.

“Sherwood” sounds like “sure would.” That’s the basis of several thousand jokes in Desert Star Playhouse’s “Robin Hood: Boooooooos and Arrows,” and the surprising thing is, they’re all really funny.

The show, the latest hit in a string of solid productions at Desert Star, is the typical musical-melodrama-parody, and a swift-moving one, too. Every scene crackles with comic energy, never dragging, and even the songs — often a weak link — are good. (Robin Hood and Maid Marion’s duet, to the tune of “Summer Love” from “Grease,” is particularly good: “She’s so cool, she really rocks/In a cartoon, he’d be a fox.” You have to remember Disney’s animated “Robin Hood” film, but once you do, oh man.)

The scaled-back story (Robin doesn’t even do any robbing from the rich or giving to the poor while he’s onstage) is that the evil Sheriff of Nottingham (Jack Drayton) is in cahoots with the also-evil Sheik Hugh Boote (Randy Tayler), whose name sounds like “shake your bootie” if you say it wrong, to overthrow King Richard.

It’s up to Robin Hood (Scott Holman, also director) to save the day, and to win the love of Maid Marion (Mary Parker Williams), with whom the Sheik is also smitten. Along for the ride is Little John (Ben Millet), who falls for Marion’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Clydesdale (Leslie Richards). There’s also the Sheriff’s bumbling henchman, Sir Guy (Jonathon Phipps, whom we like more and more every time we see him in a show here).

The negative points about this show are small, but worth mentioning. Lady Clydesdale is a fine character, but her Brooklyn accent seems to have been added primarily for the sake of annoyance, which it achieves. And Tayler is fantastically funny as the Sheik, what with his macho talk and girlish squeal, but his Arab accent often gets in the way of understanding him. For that matter, the English accents sometimes get a bit intrusive, too. Oh, and the post-show Olio is not nearly as fun as we’ve come to expect.

The rest of the show, though, is one entertaining bit of zaniness after another. The first evidence of the Sheriff’s evil, for example, is when we see him slapping an old lady around for not paying her taxes. (I’m sorry, but beating up an old lady = funny. I don’t make up the laws of comedy, I just recite them.) There’s also a great bit where Lady Clydesdale makes hand puppets in the shadow of Marion’s serious-song spotlight, and a wedding scene featuring three people dressed as brides, only one of which is actually a woman. (Men dressing as women also = funny.)

In fact, Desert Star Playhouse = funny. There, I’ve said it. Now they can quote me in their promotional materials.